In truth, to be successful, we have to be prepared to be doubted and often lose before even truly win. Success is a lifelong journey to walk on and ascent. While most of us begin our journey on what seems a smooth road, it quickly changes, bringing us uninvited turns, and unknown ups and downs.

So, how do you keep going? How can you deal with the pain, doubt, and criticism? In what way could you ever cope with failure? Is it worth all the trouble?

Well, if you want to succeed you must be prepared for any eventuality and have the resilience to face the inevitable. To be successful, you always have to take risks, change, adjust and self-develop. It is a pathway of personal growth that teaches you to deal with pain, doubt, and failure. You learn that you have to get up each time and push forward.

In any case, when you want to be successful, just be prepared because you will be doubted and tested beyond reason. An important advice is once you begin following your path, you want to fail as fast as you can because if you do not, those failures may become more costly later on.

But success can be achieved! There are countless of diverse possibilities, and where there is a will, there is a way. The world's most successful people often speak about their journeys. They even share their thoughts on how to realize it, and on how to reach it.

“Learning from the worst of times will prepare you for the best of times.” – Billy Cox

The First Lesson to Be Successful

Ask any successful person, and they will tell you that for any significant accomplishment they have made, they had to undergo countless of failures. Failures are a way to know how to progress. They are lessons that lead us to be successful, but many do not always see failure in that way.

Often than not, failing is an undesirable vibe. Yet, failure is indeed essential to be successful at something. Most people never experience such feelings because they fear failure like a disease. But you should embrace failure. Yes, no one says it is easy, but it shows that you at least had the balls to try.

Therefore, when you want something, you must be willing to sacrifice and fail to acquire it. It is not an option you can avoid. When failure happens over and over, it can be very discouraging, but it is also the reason why most accomplished people are mentally strong. They never underestimate failures but rather know that they are the laying groundwork to win later.

Be Prepared to Feel Pain

To be successful, you must travel through a painful journey. You need to agree to take suffering as your traveling companion, because resisting it is futile and generate more difficulties. Feeling pain is an unconditional part if you want to pursue success. Just know that every painful story has the probability of reaching a fruitful conclusion.

Doubt and pressure are inevitable. Both stimulate you to make changes, this way teaching you what you need to reach success. At times, stress can drive you in the right direction. So, see each day as a blessing with brand-new odds and opportunities to continue forward.

Be Prepared to Be Doubted

Now, when you want to be successful, you should always keep your dreams close to you because when you share or talk about them, cynics and critics begin to appear. The reason being is that those people are too scared to pursue their own dreams, so they try to crush yours.

It is the way most human beings are when one is trying to be successful. So, avoid those negative thoughts as they are extremely contagious. A lot of closed-minded people will doubt you, try to scare you and even discourage you from going after your dreams.

Therefore, you need to be immune to these impacts when you are on your quest for to be successful. Work in silence and let your success speak. Just prove these naysayers wrong. You may not succeed the first time around, and it also may not happen for the first five times but do not stop until you do.

"The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus." —Bruce Lee

To Be Successful Is a Choice

To be successful is a choice, and of course, it is all yours to make. Let me remind you that while you walk on your journey to success, you will at times find yourself in a floating or random direction. You then will experience powerful instants of feeling lost and desperate. And it is in these times that you must hold tight and get control of your willpower.

You need to be prepared to battle that tiny voice inside your head when you have to push yourself to keep doing what you do not feel like doing. When things look grim, you may feel like quitting, but it is the fastest way to ruin your chances. When you are on the front lines or in awkward moments, keep at it, rather than quitting. So, when wanting to be successful, you must persevere and rise.

"Don't limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, you can achieve." —Mary Kay Ash

Be Ready to Doubt Yourself

As you begin on the road to success, you find that you have feelings of being entirely paralyzed at times. The reason is that you doubt yourself. Every so often, you doubt your abilities, knowledge, or choices you have already made. You may even doubt your intuition.

Doubt creates a conflict within you over what choice you have to make to move forward. You should not delay because of thinking you might carry out the wrong decisions. To be successful, you have to push through any doubt you have and not allow it to distract you.

Know that the only wrong choice is not making one. You have the option not to doubt yourself so that you can grow and achieve. Doubts are an unavoidable part of being successful. The crucial part is that you act despite your fears.

"If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time." —Steve Jobs

Be Prepared to Lose Relationships

On your path to success, you should realize that some friends, relatives or loved ones will not be willing to support you. Wanting to be successful takes an incredible amount of energy, effort, and sacrifice. So be prepared as most of your relationships will not tolerate it, because they might feel like you owe them more of your time and effort.

All accomplished individuals make tremendous sacrifices to get to where they want to be. They trust that their friends, relatives, and loved ones will be beside while on their journey and support the sacrifices which they have to make.

You have to be prepared to lose relationships with the people who do not avidly share in your dreams. As you go along the road to success, your path will narrow down, and a handful of relations will fall off of it.

Be Willing to Be Hated for No Reason

The truth is that most people do not like successful people. Ordinary people hate the ones who have or do everything they cannot. Envy and jealousy always play along when standing out of the crowd and humbly chasing your dreams.

So, if you want to be successful, be willing to be hated for no reason. Strange as it is, no matter who you are or what you do, there will always be a certain amount of people who will not like you. But success is your biggest revenge. Therefore, learn to let your haters make you even greater.

To Be Successful Is Worth All the Trouble

To achieve anything and be successful, you have to believe in what you are doing. You have to know beyond doubt that you can and will succeed, and you have to trust the process. Anything can be accomplished when the right thoughts and actions are united. Success is worth all the trouble!

"Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you're proud to live." —Anne Sweeney

So, the lesson here is that you need to become stronger from your failures, not weaker. Analyze why you failed. See what is wrong and what is right. Make an evaluation of your skills in the areas needed for you to be successful. Adjust your sails and keep moving forward.

Obstacles, walls, and failures are nothing but other necessary elements for your success. It all starts with you. While you see that to be successful, you have to make sacrifices, keep the focus on your vision and trust in the process; it still all worth it in the end anyway. Tomorrow may never come; so start today.

Sergei VanBellinghen, Founder & CEO of First-Class Lifestyle, currently a Personal Growth & Success Expert, using self-development techniques to help you succeed and have a better life. Visit my website at sergeivanbellinghen.com